31 January, 2018

The
supposedly independent world of Internet and Social Media shows that
it will be forced to choose camps in the global economic war, which
has also a significant geopolitical impact.

After
the Wall Street mafia declared war on Bitcoin and other
Cryptocurrencies in at
least three cases quite recently, it was the turn
of Facebook to obey by choosing the camp of Western banking cabal
against Cryptocurrencies. From Recode:

Facebook
is banning all ads that promote cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin,
in an effort to prevent people from advertising what the company is
calling “financial products and services frequently associated
with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”

That
means no advertiser — even those that operate legal, legitimate
businesses — will be able to promote things like bitcoin and
other cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings — ICOs for short —
or binary options, according to a Facebook blog post.

[...]

Ads that
violate the company’s new policy will be banned on Facebook’s
core app, but also in other places where Facebook sells ads,
including Instagram and its ad network, Audience Network, which
places ads on third-party apps.

[...]

Look for
blowback from entrepreneurs and investors who argue that the move
unfairly punishes legitimate cryptocurrency companies and related
crypto products. Facebook’s board of directors includes two
investors — Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel — whose firms have
been prominent crypto backers. Facebook Messenger boss, David Marcus,
is also on the board at the popular crypto exchange Coinbase.

The fact
that Facebook's board of directors includes investors whose firms
have been prominent crypto backers, strongly indicates that the
company was actually forced to follow the camp of the Western banking
cabal in its campaign against Cryptocurrencies. It also verifies the
belief that in the pyramid of the Western economic bloc the financial
sector still possess the greater power, as it seems that dictates
certain strategies even to the biggest companies.

The
picture becomes more and more clear. At the time that entire
countries consider ways to escape Western sanctions and suffocation
from the Western monetary monopoly, the Western bloc seeks to find
ways to prevent an uncontrolled 'universe' of alternative
transactions. As these countries see a great opportunity to achieve
targets through blockchain-type technology, Wall
Street panicgrows
further.

The
Western banking cabal is now in very difficult position because this
new Cryptocurrency 'epidemic' has its roots to Bitcoin, which is a
product that came outside of the norms of the Western economic
domination system.

Yet, the
biggest problem is that, since one can buy Bitcoins with classic
currencies, the Bitcoin market is automatically connected to that
system. Which means that, sooner or later it will be 'contaminated'
by attracting, for example, all kinds of speculators coming from the
'dark side' of the dollar-dominated financial capitalism.

Which
means that, although Bitcoin is a decentralized Cryptocurrency, the
Western banking cabal knows how to destroy it: simply by
'contaminating' it with all the speculative factors that are
necessary to create a big bubble that will burst (although not that
easily in the case of Cryptocurrencies).

Therefore,
the Western banking cabal will seek to destroy Bitcoin before it
finds a safety net in a system flooded with decentralized
Cryptocurrencies and other Cryptocurrencies issued by a major rival
bloc. It is expected that the global economic war will become much
wilder, very soon ...

30 January, 2018

In a
rather grotesque prossess, the Chief Justice of the Appeals Court in
Brazil, before hearing any evidence, deems Judge Moro’s decision
impeccable. Evidence against the former Brazilian President Lula da
Silva, is almost entirely based on plea bargain testimony of a
convicted criminal who wanted his sentence reduced. Brazil's
political elite is going after Lula and the Workers Party to
eliminate them from running in the next Presidential election this
year, according to CEPR co-director Mark Weisbrot.

It
appears that this particular case with Lula da Silva is being
initiated partly from the Unites States and Weisbrot reveals the
connection of judge Sergio Moro with the US foreign policy
establishment and other US institutions who portray him as a heroic
figure who fights corruption.

Recall
also that WikiLeaks
described the Senate-imposed President of Brazil Michel Temer –
after
the constitutional
coup
against Dilma Rousseff in 2016 -
as a “U.S. Embassy informant” in a tweet and provided two links
where Temer's candid thoughts on Brazilian politics serve as the
basis for a report by the U.S. embassy in Brazil. The
cable from Jan. 11, 2006, states that Temer met with embassy
officials on Jan. 9, 2006 to give his assessment of Brazil's
political landscape ahead of the 2006 general election that saw Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva reelected to the presidency.

The
evidence against Mr. da Silva is far below the standards that would
be taken seriously in, for example, the United States’ judicial
system.

He is
accused of having accepted a bribe from a big construction company,
called OAS, which was prosecuted in Brazil’s “Carwash”
corruption scheme. That multibillion-dollar scandal involved
companies paying large bribes to officials of the state-owned oil
company, Petrobras, to obtain contracts at grossly inflated prices.

The
bribe alleged to have been received by Mr. da Silva is an apartment
owned by OAS. But there is no documentary evidence that either Mr. da
Silva or his wife ever received title to, rented or even stayed in
the apartment, nor that they tried to accept this gift.

The
evidence against Mr. da Silva is based on the testimony of one
convicted OAS executive, José Aldemário Pinheiro Filho, who had his
prison sentence reduced in exchange for turning state’s evidence.
According to reporting by the prominent Brazilian newspaper Folha de
São Paulo, Mr. Pinheiro was blocked from plea bargaining when he
originally told the same story as Mr. da Silva about the apartment.
He also spent about six months in pretrial detention. (This evidence
is discussed in the 238-page sentencing document.)

But this
scanty evidence was enough for Judge Moro. In something that
Americans might consider to be a kangaroo court proceeding, he
sentenced Mr. da Silva to nine and a half years in prison.

A
promotion
video of the Lava Jato operation indicates how
highly suspicious are the real intentions of Sergio Moro. He is
considered the one who started this operation supposedly to fight
corruption in Brazil. Yet, it seems like a covert operation to crush
the image and the reliability of the Leftist politicians who enjoy
high popularity.

The
video ends with Lula da Silva, sentenced to jail for allegedly taking
bribes. Not a single word about (as characterized by many) one of the
most corrupted presidents, Michel Temer! The neoliberal
pro-Washington Temer, not only currently stays in his position, but
it is known that he was put in power after a constitutional coup
against previous Leftist president and Lula's successor, Dilma
Rousseff!

Furthermore,
the video proceeds beyond its prosecutional 'territory' towards
indirect political positions. The narrative almost implies that
poverty in Brazil is linked with state corruption through government
officials in power. Well, poverty in Brazil and elsewhere is a
complex story, related mostly to specific policies applied by
neoliberal politicians like Temer in favor of the elites. But we
guess that this is not considered 'corruption' according to the
video.

It
is obvious that Washington's dirty hands are all over this story. The
US-backed coup will be continued in Brazil, mainly for two reasons:
first, it will permit the US corporatism to rebound in the country,
exploiting its resources, and second, it will prevent Brazil from
establishing an even stronger relation with the rest of the BRICS.

But the
Brazilians should know that this new neoliberal onslaught against
Brazil will postpone any hopes of millions to escape from poverty.

The US
empire extents coup in BrazilFor years, many had speculated – for
which they were promptly cast as tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists –
that when it comes to achieving illegal goals, including but not
limited to creating “false flag” terrorism and political
assassinations, few are as skilled and industrious as the CIA and
Mossad. Especially Mossad.

Only, as
so often happens, most (if not all) such “conspiracy theories”
turn out to be truth, in this case exposed thanks to the work of
Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, whose just-published
explosive book “‘Rise and Kill First: The secret history of
Israel’s targeted killings” details such Israeli plans as the
assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat which included a
plot to blow up passenger planes and football stadiums.

[...]

An
excerpt from the book published in the NYT , details how when former
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was defense minister, he ordered
the Israeli army to shoot down a passenger plane carrying hundreds of
innocent people Arafat was thought to be on. Arafat was chairman of
the Palestine Liberation Organization at the time. Although the plan
was eventually called off, it was allegedly one of a list of plans to
assassinate the Palestinian leader.

Sometimes
a party’s leader seems to symbolize an enduring malaise. For
Democrats in 2018, that institutional leader is Tom Perez.

While
serving as secretary of labor during President Obama’s second term,
Perez gained a reputation as an advocate for workers and civil
rights. That image may have helped him win a narrow election among
Democratic leaders to become chair of the Democratic National
Committee, with the backing of Hillary Clinton loyalists eager to
prevent the top DNC job from going to Bernie Sanders supporter Rep.
Keith Ellison.

Perez’s
leadership of the DNC during the last 11 months has been mediocre at
best. The problems go far beyond administrative failings, lack of
inspirational impacts or shortcomings in fundraising. His mode of
using progressive rhetoric while purging progressives from key DNC
committees reflected a pattern.

At the
top of the DNC, the Clinton wing’s determination to keep the
progressive base at arm’s length has not abated — while, at the
same time, the DNC proclaims its commitment to the progressive base.
The contradiction exists because of Democratic Party priorities
revolving around corporate power.

To align
the DNC with a grassroots base that is notably more progressive and
has enormous energy to challenge Wall Street and the oligarchy, it
would be necessary to welcome that energy instead of trying to keep
it at bay.

Rhetoric
aside, the DNC leadership is hardly oriented to challenging the
corporate domination that imposes so much economic injustice. Some
disturbing indicators of the current chair’s orientation can be
found in his Obama-era record as an assistant attorney general as
well as head of the Labor Department.

“Before
Tom Perez was Labor Secretary granting waivers to indicted banks, he
was at the Justice Department not prosecuting Steve Mnuchin for
illegally foreclosing on active duty troops,” financial specialist
Matt Stoller pointed out in a recent tweet.

At
the end of 2017, a dozen cities across Iran, including the capital
Tehran, were rocked by spontaneous protests which continued into the
New Year. What role did the United States play?

Part
1

At the
end of 2017, a dozen cities across Iran, including the capital
Tehran, were rocked by spontaneous protests which continued into the
New Year. The protests drew attention to the country’s
deteriorating economic conditions, along with the regime’s abysmal
human rights record.

They
also paved the way for President Donald Trump’s announcement on
January 12th that this would be a “last chance” for waiving US
nuclear sanctions under the Iran nuclear deal for a further 60 days,
after which the US would withdraw if its “disastrous flaws”
cannot be fixed.

A range
of recent official documents, from Congressional research to US
foreign aid funding reports, throw new light on the Trump
administration’s approach. The documents reveal the US government’s
continued interest in triggering major political change in Iran to
pull the country into the orbit of American interests. This includes
the possibility of exploiting political unrest and other crises –
including a worsening water crisis – to turn popular opinion
against the regime.

Iran’s
unapologetic self-determination, including its ballistic missile and
nuclear energy program as well its resistance to economic
imperialism, make it a constant thorn in Washington’s side

by
Randi Nord

Part
3 - Syria as a breaking point and the curious case of Yemen

Syria
has manifested as a breaking point for relations between Tehran and
Washington.

The
United States launched its proxy war against Syria for a variety of
reasons, one of which included replacing Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad with an Israeli-friendly regime. As part of warming
relations with Israel, Washington’s ideal Syrian government would
cease relations with Iran and cut off cooperation with Hezbollah.

An email
published by WikiLeaks reveals an exchange between Hillary Clinton
and her aides which includes the subject line “an interesting
proposal from Bruce Riedel re: how Israel could help get Assad out of
office.”: “Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Israel’s
secret intelligence service, Mossad, has rightly argued that toppling
Assad and weakening Hizbullah is a far more important and strategic
opportunity for Israel today than a military strike on Iran’s
nuclear facilities.”

Isolating
Iran was always one of Washington’s primary objective in its war
against Syria.

The
email describes hypothetical negotiations that include Syria gaining
full control of the Golan Heights on the condition Assad step down in
favor of a government that recognizes Israel while ceasing support
for Iran and Hezbollah.

That
plan didn’t work out as hoped.

In fact,
it drastically backfired: Syria has strengthened its relationship
with Iran and Hezbollah, and those entities are now battle-tested.

Iran’s
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah, and
Iranian-backed militias played a crucial role in supporting the
Syrian Arab Army against U.S.-backed proxies. Indeed, if it weren’t
for Iran’s support, the Syrian landscape would look vastly
different today.

Not only
has Iran supported the Syrian Arab Army against U.S.-backed proxies,
but its militias have dislodged and nearly eliminated ISIS and other
terrorist groups throughout Syria and Iraq. Osman had this to say
about Washington’s reaction to Iranian policy in the region:
“Nowhere is Iran projecting its regional power more broadly than
in Syria. … This only made Trump push for a further aggressive
approach to try to contain Iran. I think what worries the Trump
administration is that, with these gains, Iran and its allies will
carve out what the U.S. calls a ‘Shia crescent’ extending from
Iran, through Iraq and Syria, and into Lebanon, where Hezbollah is
the most powerful political and military force. Such a viewpoint
appears threatening not only for the Trump Administration, but also
its allies in the Arab world, especially the KSA and the Israeli
entity. According to the recent developments this past week, combined
with Tillerson’s statement, it’s obvious that the next line of
attack is going to be the northern border of Syria with Turkey.”

Syria
and Lebanon are obvious hotspots, but Washington’s vilification of
Iran through its purported support of rebel fighters in Yemen raise
far more pressing questions.

No
tangible evidence exists to prove Iran supplies Ansarullah (the
Houthis) with weapons, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,
Nikki Haley recently asserted. Nonetheless, the United States
recently labeled Ansarullah an “Iranian-backed militia” in nearly
every media report (or simply a “Shiite militia” to imply Iranian
influence).

The New
York Times went so as far as to call Ansarullah an extension of
Hezbollah: “The network Hezbollah helped build has changed
conflicts across the region. In Syria, the militias have played a
major role in propping up President Bashar al-Assad, an important
Iranian ally. In Iraq, they are battling the Islamic State and
promoting Iranian interests. In Yemen, they have taken over the
capital city and dragged Saudi Arabia, an Iranian foe, into a costly
quagmire. In Lebanon, they broadcast pro-Iranian news and build
forces to fight Israel.”

The
Times does not, however, explain Tehran’s ability to smuggle
weapons into Yemen during a U.S.-enforced land, sea, and air
blockade.

The
United States knows it is operating in a bipolar world: a nation or
group in the Middle East that doesn’t ally itself with the United
States and Saudi Arabia will likely build relations with the opposing
axis, which effectively means Iran, Syria, and now Qatar. Although
Ansarullah began as a Zaydi-Shia movement, it has since morphed into
a broad coalition consisting of Sunnis, Shias, as well as various
local tribes and political parties that oppose U.S. imperialism,
Zionism, and economic exploitation.

This
prospect troubles the United States and Saudi Arabia. If a small
Yemeni movement can resist and become self-determined, what’s to
stop citizens in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and elsewhere from getting
such ideas? The mere possibility that Ansarullah could ally with Iran
is enough for the United States to allege the relationship already
exists, and to carry out a devastating military response.

Over
35,000 civilians have been killed or wounded by Riyadh’s
U.S.-backed military aggression and siege against Yemen, based on
nothing more than the idea that they could possibly make their own
choices.

Foreshadowed
by his roots and bottle-rocket-like rise, Barack Obama’s legacy is
one of betrayal and what might have been,… From the outset, he
courted and was courted by the pillars of counter-revolution, his
very blackness a cloak for his Manchurian mission.

by
Jon Jeter

Part
5 - The Mel Reynolds mold

The year
after Washington keeled over dead from a heart attack while working
at his desk on Thanksgiving Eve of 1987, a Harvard-educated black
Rhodes scholar named Mel Reynolds challenged a Washington ally, Gus
Savage, for Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District, which included a
swath of Chicago’s South Side lakefront. It would take Reynolds
three tries to finally unseat Savage but — as Frederick Harris
wrote in his 2014 book, The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and the
Rise and Decline of Black Politics — the city’s two major daily
newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times endorsed Reynolds, as
did conservative Washington Post columnist George Will. The main
business daily, Crain’s, did not endorse him, but went out of its
way to praise him for his tendency to “downplay race as a factor
in politics.”

Feted by
foundations, bankrolled by wealthy campaign contributors, and
championed widely by the media and the affluent Hyde Park
neighborhood that is home to the University of Chicago, Reynolds’
meteoric rise led one political rival to wonder aloud how an unknown
who’d never held public office could amass such campaign cash and
name-recognition: “White politicians have bought and paid for a
novice who wasn’t even a block captain, or community leader, or
even a member of a recognized church. There’s something wrong. His
whole staff comes from City Hall, which tells you they’re being
supplied to get rid of Gus Savage.”

Reynold’s
career would ultimately be derailed by a sex scandal involving a
teenage girl, but in his three years on Capitol Hill he amassed a
voting record that was solidly neoliberal, voting for the Clinton
Administration’s North American Free Trade Act and the omnibus
crime bill, both of which were catastrophic for Chicago’s working
class and communities of color.

The same
year that Reynolds won his Congressional seat, a young, 31-year-old
community organizer named Barack Obama approached Lu Palmer asking
for his support for a voter registration effort. As Palmer told the
story, he thought the Harvard-trained lawyer both arrogant and
unoriginal, and sent him on his way. But three years later, he would
encounter Obama again.

An old
ally in the Washington campaign, Alice Palmer (no relation) had
finished third in the special election to succeed the now-disgraced
Reynolds, and she wanted to return to Springfield. Palmer asked Obama
to withdraw his name from the state senate race out of respect for
the widely-respected Alice Palmer, but Obama refused. Palmer couldn’t
recall Obama’s exact words but something about the way he spoke
sounded oddly familiar. That’s when it clicked.

Iran’s
unapologetic self-determination, including its ballistic missile and
nuclear energy program as well its resistance to economic
imperialism, make it a constant thorn in Washington’s side

by
Randi Nord

Part
2 - A clash of ideologies: imperialism vs. self-determination

Even
independent news outlets often fail to grasp the reasons behind
Washington’s constant targeting of Iran — pointing
simplistically to oil and gas. While resource theft has been a
significant factor behind Washington’s foreign policy, it alone is
not sufficient motivation to promote “regime change” for 40
years.

The true
conflict stems from Tehran and Washington’s differences in ideology
(and no, it’s not Christianity versus Islam). It’s a conflict
between imperialism and self-determination.

The U.S.
status as world superpower relies on its ability to exploit and
manipulate competition while propping up what essentially amounts to
an empire through military quests. The United States uses military,
political and economic imperialism to control populations from the
Middle East to Latin America.

Even the
population within the empire is not immune, U.S. citizens face police
brutality, labor exploitation, and tax extortion to fund empire
abroad. Several oppressed groups exist inside the United States (such
as African-Americans and indigenous peoples), which provide a
micro-scale example of how Washington deals with foreign entities it
views as inferior.

While
the United States often functions as an oppressor, an opposing
ideology is the backbone of Iran’s constitution:
self-determination.

As Point
6c in Article 2 of Iran’s Constitution states: “The Islamic
Republic is a system based on the faith in the wondrous and exalted
status of human beings and their freedom, which must be endowed with
responsibility, before God. These are achieved through: the negation
of all kinds of oppression, authoritarianism, or the acceptance of
domination, which secures justice, political and economic, social,
and cultural independence and national unity.”

To
achieve this goal, Article 3 states that Tehran will devote resources
to “unrestrained support for the impoverished people of the
world” and “the complete rejection of colonialism and the
prevention of foreign influence.”

Iran’s
foreign policy focuses on unrelenting support for the oppressed, and
refusal to accept domination culturally, economically, and
militarily. That’s precisely why Iran unconditionally supports
Palestine against Zionism, as well as other nations under the thumb
of U.S. domination.

Ph.D.
candidate, university lecturer, and political commentator Marwa
Osman, based in Beirut, Lebanon, asserts U.S. foreign policy goals
regarding Iran have little to do with national security: “The
U.S.’s attempts to put further sanctions on Iran or possibly even
start a war with Iran have nothing to do with safety or US national
security as consecutive administrations have emphasized since 1979
and everything to do with protecting corporate interests. Iran has
the third largest oil reserves and second largest natural gas
reserves in the world. U.S. foreign policy has been centered on
control of the world’s energy reserves, while the four major
recipients of Iran’s oil are all from Asia, which is very much
unacceptable to Western policymakers with national interests in mind.
The economic sanctions proposed by the U.S. would cripple the Iranian
economy and surely it would not be long before political and domestic
turmoil to grow out of hand. This would offer the U.S. and its allies
the chance to enter the country with the goal of ‘spreading
democracy.”

Foreshadowed
by his roots and bottle-rocket-like rise, Barack Obama’s legacy is
one of betrayal and what might have been,… From the outset, he
courted and was courted by the pillars of counter-revolution, his
very blackness a cloak for his Manchurian mission.

by
Jon Jeter

Part
4 - The Empire fights back

The
assassination of Martin Luther King, coupled with the twilight of
American industry’s global dominance, ratcheted up both working
class militancy, and the elites’ crackdown on it. Mineworkers in
Appalachia and autoworkers in Detroit were fighting to reclaim their
trade unions from a reactionary leadership that was in bed with
management; communists were on the march in North Carolina, Black
Panthers in Oakland; militant white college students protested the
war in Berkeley, and black parents and teachers fought for community
control of their school curriculums in Brooklyn. Fred Hampton was
organizing black street gangs and black professionals, Latinos, poor
alienated white youths, and college students and blue-collar workers
of all races into a Rainbow Coalition intent on socialist revolution.
Black voters capitalized on white flight following the season of
unrest that began with the Watts riots to elect black mayors in
Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, Gary, and Atlanta, and Puerto Ricans
joined with Blacks and Italians to force the City University of New
York to guarantee admission and free tuition for every New York city
public high school graduate.

It took
all of three months.

With
Blacks accounting for a third of the country’s unionized workforce
and taking on leadership responsibilities to boot, organized labor’s
demand for a bigger share of the pie was causing wage inflation to
spike and, combined with the Arab world’s demands that the West pay
more for its oil, slicing into the oligarchs’ profit margins.

Something
had to be done.

The
Empire began fighting back. Nixon’s southern strategy, the FBI’s
counterintelligence program, and an infamous memo to the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce by Lewis Powell, whom Nixon would later appoint to the
Supreme Court, got the ball rolling, isolating the radical black
polity from polite society. New York City’s bankers and
corporate executives doubled down on polarizing racial narratives in
executing a takeover of New York City’s finances in 1975 —
scapegoating the pensions, wages and subsidies won by public sector
unions for a financial crisis triggered by an overheated real estate
market. That same year, the publisher of The Washington Post,
Katherine Graham, broke the pressman’s union to fatten profits for
Warren Buffett and other shareholders.

The
PayPal-offshoot Becomes a Weapon in the War Against Whistleblowers
and WikiLeaks. The Palantir document notes that most well-known
journalistic professionals “with a liberal bent . . .if pushed will
choose professional preservation over cause, such is the mentality of
most business professionals.”

WikiLeaks,
the transparency organization known for publishing leaked documents
that threaten the powerful, finds itself under pressure like never
before, as does its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Now the fight to
silence WikiLeaks is not only being waged by powerful government
figures but also by the media, including outlets and organizations
that have styled themselves as working to protect whistleblowers.

Pierre
Omidyar – eBay billionaire and PayPal’s long-time owner – holds
considerable sway over several journalists and organizations that
once championed WikiLeaks but now work for the Omidyar-owned
publication, The Intercept. Thanks to his deep ties to the U.S.
government and his own long-standing efforts to undermine the
organization, Omidyar is using his influence to bring renewed
pressure to WikiLeaks as it continues to publish sensitive government
information. However, Pierre Omidyar is not the only PayPal-linked
billionaire with strong government connections and a dislike for
WikiLeaks.

Part
6 - In the wake of the 2016 election: exploiting the “mission”
weakness

More
telling than anything else, however, is why the FPF chose to move
forward with this decision. Among those members of the FPF who have
spoken up against WikiLeaks in recent months — each of them has
pointed to the concern that WikiLeaks and Assange have “gone
astray” from WikiLeaks’ original mission, rejecting its
commitment to nonpartisanship and intentionally aiding the Trump
campaign in the 2016 election — thus making the organization and
Assange responsible for Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.

Those
FPF members that do not share these views have remained silent,
despite the fact that many of them have vocally defended WikiLeaks in
the past.

This is
remarkably in keeping with the Palantir document’s cited “mission”
weakness. While the document — written in 2010 — said that some
disgruntled WikiLeaks supporters felt that Assange’s alleged target
was the United States government, the same “fracture” has arisen
with accusations that Assange was unfairly singling out Hillary
Clinton. In both cases, Assange and WikiLeaks’ goal was to expose
the crimes of both the U.S. government and, later, Hillary Clinton —
not to slander either with false information.

Now,
those accusing WikiLeaks of everything from Russian collusion to
secretly plotting with the Trump campaign are being exploited by a
massive “media campaign” built on “disinformation.” Just as
the Palantir document suggests, this media campaign is working to
“feed the fuel between feuding groups [i.e. those who accuse
WikiLeaks of anti-Hillary partisanship and those who do not].”

As will
be revealed in Part III of this series, one writer in particular —
Kevin Poulsen — has been instrumental in this recent, post-election
media campaign to discredit WikiLeaks. Yet, Poulsen’s history shows
he is no friend to whistleblowers or WikiLeaks. Not only was Poulsen
responsible for causing massive damage to the reputation and defense
of Chelsea Manning prior to her trial, he also shares a direct
connection to the FPF — and a shady connection to the U.S.
government. More troubling still, he — after two mysterious
suicides — is the only surviving member of the group that created
SecureDrop, the app which — after being promoted by the FPF and The
Intercept — is now widely used by top media outlets for “secret”
communication between would-be whistleblowers and big-name
journalists. Could Poulsen’s troubled past with WikiLeaks and its
sources endanger SecureDrop’s goal of protecting whistleblowers?

28 January, 2018

Without
the slightest amount of exaggeration, we could easily characterize as
a historical moment the event that took place on Jan 23, 2018 at the
National Town Hall in Washington. Bernie Sanders bypassed the
corporate media to bring on the table one of the most serious issues
for millions of Americans: health care as a right for all.

Sanders’
town hall, which was co-hosted by the left-leaning online video news
outlets The Young Turks, NowThis and ATTN, demonstrated that a
lengthy seminar on the complicated topic of single-payer health care
can draw a crowd as large as many primetime cable news shows. The
auditorium itself was packed to capacity with some 450 attendees. And
together, the live audiences on the senator’s Facebook and YouTube
pages, the the three news sites and some other outlets that picked up
the stream added up to about 1.1 million people.

So, one
of the most serious issues that was literally buried for decades by
the corporate media because they have been completely taken over by
the neoliberal regime, came to surface by the alternative media
through the Internet. The numbers above show clearly that this is a
big defeat for the corporate media.

Bernie's
political revolution had already started since the Democratic
primaries before the 2016 Presidential election. We wrote
then:

Bernie
has the background and the ability to change the course of the US
politics. He speaks straightly about things buried by the
establishment, as if they were absent. Wall Street corruption,
growing inequality, corporate funding of politicians by lobbies. He
says that he will break the big banks. He will provide free health
and education for all the American people. Because of Sanders,
Hillary is forced to speak about these issues too. And subsequently,
this starts to shape again a fundamental ideological difference
between Democrats and Republicans, which was nearly absent for
decades.

But
none of this would have come to surface if Bernie didn't have the
support of the American people. Despite that he came from nowhere,
especially the young people mobilized and started to spread his
message using the alternative media. Despite that he speaks about
Socialism, his popularity grows. The establishment starts to sense
the first cracks in its solid structure. But Bernie is only the
appropriate tool. It's the American people who make the difference.

So,
even after Trump in power, Bernie didn't let this great momentum get
wasted. He smartly capitalizes the popularity he enjoys by driving
the political discussion towards serious problems that should be top
priority for any US politician.

Moreover,
the establishment is losing power by the onslaught of real
progressives who mark significant victories in the US political
field. And this brings additional heat to the corporate Democrats who
are exposing themselves, more and more, by refusing to change the
'business as usual' agenda, dictated by the neoliberal regime.

The
political revolution is taking place as we speak and Bernie Sanders
speeds up the process. By 2020, the momentum will be strong enough to
push the revolution into its second, critical phase ...